The syntactic integration of Kata Kolok pointing signs from a developmental perspective

Kata Kolok is a village sign language that is unrelated to any other sign language and thus constitutes an independent sample in cross-linguistic comparisons (Marsaja 2008). The language has been the primary means of communication of at least 5 subsequent generations of deaf signers in social, lithurgical, professional, and educational settings. It has a number of structural characteristics that are unusual compared to other sign languages; most notably, Kata Kolok signers prefer an absolute Frame of Reference in spatial description. Perhaps less surprsingly, one in six signs is an index finger point in Kata Kolok, and these points come to serve a wide range of functions including, but not restricted to, colour indications, time adverbial constructions, and place and person reference (de Vos 2012). The ubiquity of pointing signs and their high degree of functional diversification suggest that pointing signs are a key aspect in learning to use the language appropriately. While all infants use communicative pointing gestures, pointing signs in sign languages come to serve grammatical functions, particularly in the domain of place, time and person reference. Adopting a developmental perspective, what language-specific evidence can be identified in support of the syntactic integration of different pointing types? Petitto (1987) showed that children acquiring American Sign Language start to differentiate first and second person pointing by 24-27 months, in parallel to hearing children acquiring English pronouns in terms of timing and acquisition errors. This study is based on monthly video recordings of a deaf preschooler in the age of 24-36 months, who acquires Kata Kolok - a village sign language of Bali natively. Based on the analysis of 5.5 hours of video data, it explores the use of index finger pointing, in spontaneous conversations between the child and his caregivers, relatives, and older siblings. Transcription activities have thusfar resulted in the identification of 1,119 manual signs of which 458 (41%) are pointing signs. Following Petitto's (1987) study, I highlight a few developmental transitions that are taken to indicate a possible transition from pre-linguistic gesture to pointing sign on behalf to the child. Most notably, the child starts to co-produce multiple grammatical facial expressions alongside index finger points, such as the perfective marker 'pah', around 25 months, suggesting that the syntactic integration of pointing signs starts as early as 25 months. This finding matches previous observations on the syntactic acquisition of pronominal pointing signs made by Petitto (1987). These initial results suggest that the ontological development of pointing may provide additional evidence for the grammatical status of pointing in adult signing, as instantiated in language-specific ways. Given Kata Kolok’s unique typological profile, further exploration of the child signing section of the Kata Kolok corpus could contribute considerably to our understanding of what is universal and particular in the acquisition of sign languages, thus having the potential to advance our understanding of the comparative acquisition of typologically-distinct sign languages